Just for LOL, I went to my old host a few days ago just to read the Support Forums. Now I couldn't be happier switching over to Jcink.

THe old host was Prophpbb but recently "Partnered up" with Tapatalk. Ironically none of the userbase had any say into this.

So I was reading some threads just for LOLs and even though Tapatalk had "Taken Over" several months ago, there were/are so many posts about things not working, or even missing.

I only read a few of them but seems like there's hundreds of things wrong with Tapatalk. As long as Jcink doesn't make any mistakes like this in the future I can honestly say I'm going be be here for a long while

It is ridiculous though, that Prophpbb didn't even let their userbase vote in favor or against. The Admin though was a pretty good person but after all the speculation that got me to leave I did feel pretty bad. Almost one year with them before this happened.

One other thing I'd like to bring up is Promotion. To make a person Moderator, Admin, or anything, you just go to ACP > Find/Edit/Suspend User > Find User > Edit Details. You scroll down to find "Group" and choose the group for your member.

With the hosts I've used in the past, there's an extra few steps you actually have to do to successfully put your member in a new group. I've always had problems figuring that out. If you missed a single step it wouldn't work properly if at all. I once had it where I made a friend (can't remember Admin or Moderator), it it said he was in said group but they didn't have the permissions...all because one or 2 lousy steps.

I really do love it when things are pretty straight forward, just edit User's profile to make them admin rather than doing gazillion other steps just do successfully put them into said group, especially if you don't know what you're missing and you start getting frustrated.

Now that I think of I could come up with a pretty decent list of why I prefer Jcink over both hosts I've used in the past...but don't get me started

Also, I can't remember if I said this previously, if anyone was going to build a Message Board, in a heartbeat I'd send them here My personal opinion Jcink deserves 10/10 Stars

Yes, tapatalk is actively trying to acquire forum providers. We did get some unprofessional looking email from them regarding acquisition/sale of our service too. I ignored it entirely. This was in May of this year. I've disliked Tapatalk for years and refused to integrate it into our service platform for a variety of reasons. But, as you noticed, they aren't just buying or partnering with the providers and keeping things as-is. Boards, in many cases, are being converted to Tapatalk's own forum software without much choice.

Over at ZetaBoards (formerly InvisionFree) is a mess. Tapatalk acquired that software back in August (that's 4 months ago). They got InvisionFree too, which has officially been discontinued. You can no longer register an InvisionFree board.

Owners of IF boards have problems because the default conversion choice is Tapatalk and not ZetaBoards, although the ZetaBoards staff went all out to notify everyone of the ownership change and the Tapatalk conversion choice. Board Owners have either abandoned their board and changed their e-mail or just didn't bother checking their Inboxes. They put an announcement on the forum, they sent e-mails to users, private message, they even posted support staff recommendation at the top of their support forum:

QUOTE

All communities remaining on zIFBoards/InvisionFree should check their conversion opt-in selection in their Admin CP (menu item Tapatalk Conversion)

But even that doesn't seem to help a lot since many IF board owners are posting threads over at BOTH Tapatalk AND ZetaBoards support forums because they want to switch to ZetaBoards. Of course, it's too late already for the already converted boards, since there is no way to switch from Tapatalk to ZetaBoards.

Like I said - it's a mess. I just hope ZB stays as it is and that Tapatalk doesn't ruin it because it's a good software and it's definitely my favorite besides Jcink.

In defense of IF/ZB they did everything they could to notify of the change, unfortunately, many were going to be swallowed in the conversion.

Also, it's not technically the users fault, but the IF software has been basically running in 'maintenance' mode for years now. You don't start a new community on software that is hardly being worked on anymore. It's illogical.

There was no future for IF the moment ZB came out. It continued on for way longer as is than it should have, but it's a testament to how great the original IB software was.

Looks like ZB itself is lacking too in that area as well. I just checked to see if they've added https yet and they haven't. Last bit I could find on that was from March of last year... yet we have been testing it for the last year already and will be making it the default link for newly created forums soon.

Also, this is a danger of choosing any service provider that will not supply you the database. You are stuck with whatever they want you to do. It's similar here or for any host, we could make an an unpopular change tomorrow, but hey at least you have your data.

Sorry for the late reply, but it really looks like that you're right. It seems that because ZB does not support HTTPS, it also can't support dohtml. Found some interesting discussion bits over at their support board. I hope it's fine to post links.

It seems that users lost YEARS of work and now have to either use a dohtml to bbcode converter to make everything work again or edit everything manually, which is kind of a HUGE and a hard task to do if you have more than a decade of writing history featuring regular usage of dohtml. Some users are even mentioning that it would be great if they could convert their board to JFH.

Just read some of the above posts. Ouch. While I understand the risks involved with allowing doHTML I think that should be the user's choice. There are also some things you can do to mitigate the damage. Also ZB doesn't have custom bbcode either? I didn't realize that. That really makes a full switch to HTML near impossible for those who have template designs.

Have had some emails recently about converting from ZB to our service but it will never be possible. No access to database.

They could have at least made the offer to members who didn't want either ZB or Tapatalk to give the forum database of the zIF version of their boards to them for a price so they could keep using the software they are familiar with on here. Especially since their Resource Database and their convertor broke long before the Tapatalk aquisition.

It would have been easier for both sides: the service users and their members would be able to continue right where they left off, plus it might have reduced the time needed to host & maintain the outdated version of the IPB software which was not being developed anymore (which is, thankfully, not the case with this host), which could also end up NOT having to keep postponing the further development of ZB. The "no giving away the forum database" policy simply isn't working out for them anymore since they are already loosing costumers and are a whole decade behind on software updates.Not to mention that it's one of the factors that contributed to the Tapatalk acquisition.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm back with JFH permanently. SMF For Free has a wired ACP and while I think ProBoards his quite good, it's just not the forum host that I would want to my board to be hosted on. So yeah. I'm officially back.

I just thought: I was walking home from work tonight and realized that the original owner of Prophpbb isn't the owner any more (maybe I'm wrong?).

Also, once I found out they were forcing Tapatalk on us I decided to close my board with a msg with my new board. Then I'm like: I should have just left it open to see how crappy it would have turned out.

Not only there's gazillion things wrong with Tapatalk, but even though you can supposedly custom your templates, I can only guess it's nowhere near as nice as the previous host (Prophpbb, not Tapatalk). I'm actually surprised they still have a decent userbase. Needless to say though, I can only imagine that several (possibly hundreds) of users left because of this.

Can't remember how I found this host, though...I think I may have googled. If this keeps up, you could compare Tapatalk to a plague.

It would definitely be nice to see roughly how many people actually left because of Tapatalk.